Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday July 06, 2010 @03:43PM
from the phish-travel-in-squools dept.

quickOnTheUptake writes in to update the story of foul play in Apple's App Store, which we talked over on Sunday. The Next Web, which broke the story, now provides evidence of rampant App Farms used for theft in the store. Here is a summary of the problems TNW has seen, which includes large-scale break-ins of the App Store accounts of users worldwide. Apple has responded to the initial reports, has disabled the account of the initially fingered rogue developer, and has called on those whose accounts were misused to change their password and credit card. Both TNW and Engadget, at least, believe the problems go far deeper than Apple is admitting.

I'd say over 75% of the apps on the app store are either cookie cutter, functionally useless, don't work as advertised or completely ignore Apples HIG. Apple doesn't mind this, however, because they enjoy putting out press releases touting they now however many hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store.

Apple did not catch him, the users did... when they lost their money and had no choice but to go to their banks to get it back.Perhaps they should not approve apps that have no purpose?Can a developer REALLY put together almost 5,000 apps?That is to the point of being obvious as hell that your gaming the system, yet was allowed to.

The important point is not that a rogue developer was able to get it, but that Apple was able to catch him, stop him, and let their users know about it quickly.

Apple didn't catch him. The "apps" in question were absolute trash (along with the 300+ iFart apps), making a mockery of any illusions that it's a curated garden.

However just to be clear, we already know that the Android market can do precisely the same thing, forcefully reaching out and removing rogue content. Instead of any ridiculous notions of curation, however, Android relies upon a permissions system that makes a user aware of the potential reach of any given application. It is far from perfect, yet despite some ignorant criticism directed at it recently it beats the hell out of anything on the iPhone.

Not really sure why we're talking about the phones though. The exploit in this case didn't necessarily have much to do with the actual handsets themselves.

Eh, the system didn't work. Last night on TV, some dude on the "tech spot" for the local news said that up to $10,000 were spent from a single account!

The whole bit was REALLY lame. They explained it like this:

There's a warehouse, and 1 dude in there shouting "books, books" with no one buying because they can't hear his voice from the many other. So then, somehow he rigs it (hacks) so that he goes into peoples accounts and buys his own book. Then apple is like, o`rly? Why is this lowly book #1 beating out ze twinkle series? And so they noticed and are like arrrrg! We've been piz0wn0red, right And they recall the app and remove it from the store.

I think that, regardless of how bad they portrayed what happened, the damage is done. All the arguments the smug iPhonies have made of "well macs don't get viruses...(implying security)" "it's good that there is so much control because it makes it safer..." are now??? But, thankfully for apple, many of their fans will just turn their heads and look the other way.

So I guess only time will tell but I'm guessing those with that white veil over their eyes won't let this problem affect them. As one windows to mac user said "I just got tired of windows... and macs just work!"

Apple was able to respond to the situation, TRUE. Apple did not discover the situation, but they did CREATE it and ENABLE it. How this might be different from other internet based purchasing methods is a bit technical, but it comes down to most web based e-commerce enables the user to protect transactions with other forms of identity confirmation and gives the user the opportunity to not store this critical information.

Methinks that stupid/useless apps are not an issue. There's a lot of crappy books in every bookstore, and I have no problem with that. But the issue is that people's iTunes credentials got stolen, and I don't think it was Apple's fault unless the exploits were running on OS X...

The problem is that credentials were contained without user control and thereby stolen and/or used. That should never be able to happen without at least a password -- a program shouldn't be able to do that on its own.

I haven't seen anything saying a program itself did anything without a password. Most likely scenario is developer got password through some other means, put up all these random apps, and began purchasing them.

So a total of 48 apps out of 200,000+ were bad 'Apples', and suddenly the entire App store is a 'dismal failure'

Still trying to figure out who you are quoting with the dismal failure bit. Or are you setting up a strawman, ready for the heroic striking down?

However there are countless terrible, terrible apps in the App Store. There are countless terrible, terrible apps in the Android market. The difference is that one of these claims that they curate their market (comparing themselves to a fine museum) -- their founder openly saying that user privacy is why they curate their market -- and the other makes no such notion (but instead protects privacy by forcing apps to declare rights requests that users need to allow). I'll let you guess which is which.

This has nothing to do with the app store other than the fact it happened to be the vendor who was targeted. It's an online vendor that stores a credit card. It could (and does) happen to any high profile vendor that operates in this way. The 'quality' of the app in question is irrelevant, as the hacker could have chosen any app, good or bad, to purchase. Folks are jumping all over themselves trying to make this story about the 'walled garden' when it has absolutely nothing to do with Apples closed system,

You seem to be confused, and should probably re-read the article. These apps are not scams, they are actually simple book apps, in and of themselves, unremarkable.

Did I say otherwise somewhere? If so, I apologize, but I'm quite sure I'm made no insinuation that these were any sort of exploit.

Instead they were just garbage fillers, used as a target for an exploit (the mechanism of which we have no idea of, though curiously lots of people are trotting out the Apple-can't-be-to-blamed simple passoard canards e

Listen, I realize you might have a problem with threaded conversation, and you seem to be trying to mesh every comment with the submission, but that just isn't how it works. See, I was replying to someone who made a command, and this thread carried on from there.

I'm not complaining about slashdot reporting stories... I'm saying that any Apple story - whether it be positive or negative - turns into people screaming their hatred for the company like it were a picture of Emmanuel Goldstein. In the ten years I've been visiting the site, I've seen this only happen to two companies: Microsoft and SCO.

My point: Fuck apple... I don't care about their rep... it's this blind parroting that makes for a shitty discussion. If I wanted that... I'd head over to Digg.

I'm not complaining about slashdot reporting stories... I'm saying that any Apple story - whether it be positive or negative - turns into people screaming their hatred for the company like it were a picture of Emmanuel Goldstein. In the ten years I've been visiting the site, I've seen this only happen to two companies: Microsoft and SCO.

When you get your moment of fame, be prepared for a pie in the face - these things always go hand in hand.

Similarly, I think that the sheer scale of those attacks is good news for Apple in a sense that it is a great testament to their success in the market. This kind of fraud primarily targets platforms with large overall user count, most of whom don't have a clue as to how the tech actually works - like, you know, Windows. Looks like iOS has joined that club.

Slashdot is an interesting place. It's a gathering of some of the most brilliant and free-thinking minds in the world and all of their groupies. What's more interesting is that both characterizations apply equally to each person here. We're geeks (or geeks-to-be). Our knowledge is specialized, focused, and usually at our level, obscure. Collectively, we know everything about everything, but no individ

I'm not complaining about slashdot reporting stories... I'm saying that any Apple story - whether it be positive or negative - turns into people screaming their hatred for the company like it were a picture of Emmanuel Goldstein. In the ten years I've been visiting the site, I've seen this only happen to two companies: Microsoft and SCO.

And that's not even the worst:

The painful torture of logic reasoning: Apple are evil because they are arrogant because they don't admit there is a serious problem which is serious because at least ten bloggers have said there is a problem. Curating is evil because it takes away our freedom to download shoddy and dangerous apps but they should have blocked all those fart applications. Oh, and curating doesn't work because it doesn't block each and every app that Joe Blogger thinks shouldn't be in the stor

Listen, when your marketing literally states that you are "changing the world" with your phone, and apparently you didn't properly engineer the antenna, your customers are going to complain bitterly. And then everyone who realizes that Apple is just Microsoft with better industrial designers and better marketing are going to laugh at the brand loyalists who got bitten again because Apple favors form over function.

for the most part i agree its pointless, but the troll/haters do give you some measure on the "word on the street". a couple years ago, the tone was fairly pro Apple here and on some other sites I frequent. The Apple haters were the oddballs. Now, it seems the oddballs are the folks defending Apple, and the haters have become a majority. It's a trend that seems to be growing over the past year and seems to be ever increasing.

So.. I do see some value in all this as a metric on Apple's place in the heart

While I agree there are plenty of examples of herd-thinking on/. I also think there are some legitimate criticisms of Apple being made (albeit repeatedly). I think criticism of the "walled-garden" is legitimate, for example. You will also find many people talking about MacOS as the best/most-secure OS out there too -- as another poster said, it cuts both ways.

Goldstein was the purported author of a book that explains the way the oligarchy controlled the masses. Hmm, that could be analagous to DRM and closed platforms, but I'm still not really seeing it, since that makes Apple Big Brother and not Goldstein, although admittedly in the book, Goldstein is a fabrication of Big Brother, so maybe in a twisted way it works.

Finally, Goldstein supposedly had a network of people undermining the ruling party. The party spread this information to create fear in the populace. I haven't seen Apple saying Microsoft or Google is infiltrating their customers and undermining them from within.

Nope. All I can figure is that Apple is doing a bad job with the app store and you suck at analogies. But better luck next time.

More like O'Brien [wikipedia.org]. At first glance, he's an anti-establishment agent, determined to break down the oppressive system. But once he lures you in, you'll experience psychological pressure like never before and you will be assimilated!

What happened there?They won't allow flash or 'widgety' apps yet allow apps that do noting but get the developer points.A developer with almost 5,000 apps?So much for that 200,000 apps in the apple store.... perhaps half are fake?

I have seen 'fake' apps in the Android store so this is not isolated to just Apple.If you see an app in the market with virtually no rating then you know to pass it by.The one thing that the Android market lacks is filters.

But the Android market is known to lack filters. You go to the android market because it lacks filters.

Apple claims that all of the ridiculous app store shenanigans over the past few years have been in order to create a family-friendly, safe Disneyland. And hopefully they will deliver on that promise. But in the mean time, buyer beware. Using iTunes to turn hijacked computers into dollars is actually kind of brilliant. Hopefully we won't see that proliferate.

I probably should have made this more clear.When I say it lacks filters I mean search filters.I don't want to see the apps that have been rated into hell itself.I would like to be able to filter apps with say, less than 3 star rating.

I know someone who works in the fraud prevention business and they allege that iTunes purchases and credit card fraud are strongly correlated. Their story goes like this: an iTunes purchase is made for an unknown app, and within minutes a very high value (basically max-out) charge is placed on the same card. The catch is that the max-out charge is placed with an *actual* card (presumably a cloned card) and since it is incredibly unlikely that every case is fraud abuse (a made up 'theft' story by the cardholder) there is something that iTunes is either doing directly or indirectly that is enabling this activity.

Now the question for the armchair detectives is: is the iTunes purchase the moment of the leak of the card info (through some sort of hacked app), or is the iTunes purchase a test mechanism for the already stolen card info? Not being a big Apple person I haven't spent much time buying from the App store; is it possible to buy an app for someone elses' device, or for a device that doesn't exist yet?

This is probably another quick and anonymous method of checking the validity of a stolen card. Before, credit card thieves would run cards through gas station card readers. This worked until the readers started prompting for the ZIP code of the cardholder.

My solution? Consider either using iTunes gift cards, or if that isn't an option, put the CC info in, make purchases, then remove the information.

Gift cards like those worry me and I refuse to buy them for ANY company. I've seen too many people buy gift cards (that just use a number string) try to get the credit from the card after buying them to only be told that the number has already been used by someone else (they use them by using a Random Key Generator). And since it's just about impossible to prove that you were the first and only owner of it, your typically SOL.

I could be mistaken, but I believe iTunes gift cards are activated at time of purchase, which should prevent that from happening. Also, unlike other gift cards which are often used for multiple purchases, iTunes gift cards are used to apply a one-time credit to your existing iTunes account, so if it works the first time, you know nobody can steal it because the card is already worthless. Finally, I would expect that Apple should have the ability to track the activation and use of a given iTunes gift card

> My solution? Consider either using iTunes gift cards, or if that isn't an option, put the CC info in, make purchases, then remove the information.

TFA agrees with you ("Remove your iTunes card details and consider using gift cards where possible."), but using a gift card is a really bad idea. The article also says to "try prevent any iTunes purchases from clearing." These suggestions show a misunderstanding of the legal protections afforded consumers when we use credit cards.

Under the law, you have 60 days to dispute credit card transactions. You can do this if the transaction has cleared (which is typically less than 24 hours). You can do this even if you've already paid your credit card bill. Your credit card company is required to refund the amount to your account until the dispute is resolved and help you in the dispute resolution process. The law has some antiquated restrictions about transactions occurring more than 50 miles from your home and technically gives you a liability of $50, and doesn't cover debit cards. However, both Visa and Mastercard have policies of zero liability that cover both credit and non-PIN-based debit transactions independent of how far from your home they occur. I've disputed numerous charges for various reason, including having someone make a copy of my card in Mexico (I still had the card but the bank said it was a card-present transaction). Disputes have always been resolved quickly and in my favor. In short, using a credit cards is the safest way to buy stuff. Always use a credit card for any purchase.

Think if you'd used a gift card. Gift cards are like cash. If the purchase was fraudulent, you only lose the value of the gift card, but you have no way to get it back. I guess the safest way would be to reload your gift card each and every time you make a purchase for the exact purchase amount. I think that would be a bit annoying.

I use a very low limit card for on-line purchases, and for travel.Active limit is < $800, nominal limit is $10,000 if I go on-line to my bank's website and increase it.I've had to re-issue that card number only twice, once for a lost wallet, once for on-line fraud.-nB

Some banks / credit cards allow you to generate temporary credit card numbers with a limit that you specify. The ones I've seen in use also tie themselves to the first vendor they are used with. So if first used on iTunes by you then cloned cards will not work elsewhere.

Wait, what? How would me using an iTunes gift card prevent someone from buying stuff using my credit card number, if they have it? If the iTunes purchase is a test of a credit card number, it's clear that they're not getting in through the iTunes store. iTunes store doesn't show the numbers of credit cards registered with it. It's not like you can do a test purchase of a song and then buy jewelry!

Any small purchase can be used to "test" to make sure the card info is correct. For physical cards it's often a gas station, but that doesn't work when the fraud is 100% electronic (ie, no fake plastic) so any system where you can make small, but, verifiable purchases before maxing the card out on a larger purchase is desirable.

iTunes is great for that, but I've gotten calls about other small charges from my credit card company when they've flagged a questionable transaction.

I know someone who works in the fraud prevention business and they allege that iTunes purchases and credit card fraud are strongly correlated. Their story goes like this: an iTunes purchase is made for an unknown app, and within minutes a very high value (basically max-out) charge is placed on the same card. The catch is that the max-out charge is placed with an *actual* card (presumably a cloned card) and since it is incredibly unlikely that every case is fraud abuse (a made up 'theft' story by the cardholder) there is something that iTunes is either doing directly or indirectly that is enabling this activity.

Now the question for the armchair detectives is: is the iTunes purchase the moment of the leak of the card info (through some sort of hacked app), or is the iTunes purchase a test mechanism for the already stolen card info? Not being a big Apple person I haven't spent much time buying from the App store; is it possible to buy an app for someone elses' device, or for a device that doesn't exist yet?

The iTunes thing is a credit card test.

If you think about it, if you steal a bunch of credit cards (e.g., hack a payment processor), the easiest way to test them is to run up a charage against something that has most people thinking is a normal charge.

E.g., a lot of people have iTunes accounts, so get iTunes to do run a charge and see if it goes through - you'll see this as a $0.99 billing mostly. The goal is to hide that 99 cent charge amongst hopefully other iTunes charges.

Earlier this year, a payment processor was hacked (one used by one of my favorite stores) - it's unusual because the store itself doesn't store credit card data (they can't), but a bunch of people who used that store noticed the iTunes charges, while others noticed and saw the strange charges as well (too late).

I don't think there's any credit card information being stolen from Apple (no app can get at it unless it key logs - at worst they'll get your iTunes account information as your credit card isn't transmitted to Apple at all - Apple looks up your stored credit card info).

As for enabling the activity, I think it's because iTunes is quite popular - a good chunk of those doing online shopping have probably bought something from iTunes, thus the change of burying a charge is greater, and there's probably some API that was hacked in order to rapidly test credit cards. Also, Apple delays charging for a week or so (to avoid multiple 99 cent charges, they'd rather do a batch charge) but iTunes does do a reservation for each charge to ensure credit is available.

Not being a big Apple person I haven't spent much time buying from the App store; is it possible to buy an app for someone elses' device, or for a device that doesn't exist yet?

Yes. The purchases are just like iTunes music purchases. They require an iTunes account. They're not bound to specific devices at all, they're bound to iTunes accounts. Even if you don't have an iOS device, nothing would stop you from going out and buying an app right now. If you ever did sync an iOS device to your iTunes library, the app would then install on that device (if you haven't deleted it from your library in the intervening time). Even if it's a hardware model and OS version that didn't exi

I personally think it's an Apple insider, actually. A couple of years ago anyone who had access to the store's database management tools had essentially free access to everything. People could literally dump a backup of the db to a USB hard drive and walk out the door with it. I'm sure they've tightened it up since then (well, moderately sure), so it would be interesting to see if the accounts getting attacked include new accounts or only accounts that have been around for a while.

Your credit card number is not exposed in iTunes. The only time you can see the number is when you initially key it in when you are creating your iTunes account. It's hidden after that, even if you go in to verify and/or change your payment information. You can only see the last four digits of the card used. Easily verified by going into itunes, clicking on the Store -> View My Account menus, and then clicking the 'Edit Payment Information' button.

The hackers attempted to order a macbook pro. I called Apple support- who kept asking what product I was having a problem with. One insisted that I was viewing the Apple website through a Mac, so therefore the problem was actually with the Mac.

Apparently they have no technical support/hacking section for their website- account issues don't exist according to them. I was finally able to reach level 2 tech support after faking a problem with my Macbook; where the account was flagged and order canceled.

Try living in a college town in a rural area, lots of call centers love setting up shop in these places because there are plenty of smart students and recent grads who would rather do tech support than flip burgers until they graduate or find a real job.

Of course this does have the side effect of creating large numbers of burned-out and cynical young people who's first impression of having a job is that the employer only cares about working you to the bone and then spits you out when you burn out or make th

Of course this does have the side effect of creating large numbers of burned-out and cynical young people who's first impression of having a job is that the employer only cares about working you to the bone and then spits you out when you burn out or make the tiniest of mistakes at the wrong time (wrong time is here defined as: when the boss is looking to lay some people off, right after you questioned anything the boss said or any number of other reasons).

Wait, so they suggest customers to get new credit cards? Well, one thing I do not understand is this: the credit card information is with Apple, but I thought only Apple has access to this stored information. There should be no way for the bad guys to obtain my credit card information from there. If they have the credentials to my apple account they can make Apple charge my credit card without my authorisation. But in this case Apple would have to give me back this money as I did not authorise it etc. And as soon as I have changed my password... the problem should stop (as long as they don't get my new password somehow)...

Stolen database backup? It's incredibly easy, and extremely embarrassing. Most companies don't want to admit, "Well, the intern that we foisted the backup jobs on gave the tapes to some guy in an Iron Mountain shirt and now we don't know where your data is." I know it's happened locally at least twice, and neither company fessed up to its customers.

You can bet a dollar to a doughnut that they have some clever verbiage buried deep down in the EULA that removes their responsibility in some meaningful way.

BTW, who the hell is still visiting the crApp Store anyway? I froze my iTouch at 2.2.1 because I refuse to pay another $10 for the elusive Copy/Paste bug they failed to ship, or fix, in my rev. I downloaded all the free games, fart apps, tip computers, and two useful apps back in 2008 and never went back. Not all that impressed with the garden. In f

The apps themselves are harmless shit. There's no reason they shouldn't've been approved, unless Apple is going to reject apps for simply being lame.

The problem is that someone (presumably the developer) has iTunes account names and passwords, and used them to buy the apps. There's conspiracy theories as to how, but the most likely possibility is shared or weak passwords. When you're talking less than 500 compromised accounts over 150,000,000 accounts, it seems possible these could just be the "password" ac

One example is Brighthouse Labs with 4568 Apps, all virtually worthless.

How does apple approve of 4578 apps from one developer? I thought each app was audited? Or is some of the auditing done through heavy automation. Such that if you got Pacman approved whereby each dot you ate gave you one point, then you could make another pacman that each dot gave you 2points, and the second version was automatically approved.

The apps from that 'developer' are things like 'xxx Quotes' where there are quotes collections for many many different people. And slider puzzles where there are many different pictures. And recipie books.

Basically the kind of 'stuff' where the actual codebase is a small container re-released over and over and over with different content.

That's part of the problem in general with the 'little Apps' model Apple has developed. There are separate 'Web Radio Players' for each radio station, leading to thousands of different radio 'apps.'

How can a compromised developer account contain iTunes login information?

Are the people who got hacked also developers on the App Store?

How many accounts are known (publicly) to be hacked?

Without more information, it's hard to take any of this as a serious breach... all of these actions could easily have been had by PC malware or Jailbroken phone malware, via the information black market.

I have to agree Apple is getting a tone of slashdot attention. Knowing Apple's reputation they probably plan and want the publicity. But lately they been getting a lot of negative attention which is not a good thing.

I have to agree Apple is getting a tone of slashdot attention. Knowing Apple's reputation they probably plan and want the publicity. But lately they been getting a lot of negative attention which is not a good thing.

This is yet another ludicrous attack on Apple. The problem here is not that "rogue apps" have stolen your itunes account and credit card number, it is that these rogue developers have stolen itunes accounts/credit cards or purchased same from some other source and are using these to purchase their apps and make money, both from the purchases and the rising up in the charts. So, please, please just stop with this. Why do you idiots want to kill Apple? If it's because they don't make a phone that you like, well, that is really f-ing pathetic.

the app store never reveals credit card information. if you know a user's log in and password, you can make app store and itunes purchases from any device. you can't, however, get their credit card.

unfortunately it's trivially easy to get the login information. All a developer has to do is make an app that asks for credentials. It can be very legit so as to make it through apple's approval process. Really, all apple cares about is if the app is reasonably stable, doesn't duplicate their functionality, an